Self-interference handling in a wireless communication terminal supporting carrier aggregation

ABSTRACT

A wireless communication terminal that has the self-interference due to the support of carrier aggregation, aggregating and jointly using two or more component carriers for transmission and reception, performs a first set of measurements on a received signal on a first operating frequency, wherein the first set of measurements are performed during which the wireless terminal transmits or receives signals on a second operating frequency. In an alternative embodiment, the wireless communication terminal changes the maximum transmit power limit on a first operating frequency on a per-slot basis to reduce the impact of harmonic or intermodulation distortion on a received signal at a second operating frequency.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser.No. 13/587,314, filed Aug. 16, 2012, the disclosure of which isincorporated herein by reference.

FIELD OF THE DISCLOSURE

The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communications and,more particularly, to the avoidance or reduction of self-interferencecaused by harmonic distortion, inter-modulation (IM) distortion, orreceiver images in carrier aggregation wireless communication terminalsand corresponding methods.

BACKGROUND

In EUTRA LTE-Advanced, carrier aggregation (CA), where multiplecomponent carriers are aggregated and jointly used for transmission andreception within a User Equipment (UE), is introduced to meet the peakdata rate requirements of International Mobile Telecommunications(IMT)-Advanced, 1 Gbps and 500 Mbps for downlink and uplink,respectively. Furthermore, CA can provide reduced handover latency andoverall, can provide consistent user experience and fairness.

Based on the frequency arrangement of aggregated component carriers(CC), carrier aggregation can be categorized as intra-band contiguousCA, intra-band non-contiguous CA, and inter-band non-contiguous CA. Inintra-band contiguous CA, two or more adjacent CCs within a singleoperating band are aggregated while intra-band non-contiguous CAaggregates non-adjacent CCs in the same frequency band. Inter-bandnon-contiguous CA aggregates two or more CCs from different frequencybands.

While inter-band CA or intra-band non-contiguous CA allow wirelessnetwork operators to effectively utilize the fragmented spectrum,inter-band CA UE may suffer from significant amount of self-interferencecaused by harmonics of one uplink component carrier from a frequencyband falling into another aggregated carrier's receive band or downlinkcomponent carrier in another frequency band supported by the inter-bandUE. Self-interference may also occur due to intermodulation products ofmultiple uplink carriers falling into one of its LTE receive bands orreceive bands of co-located other radios such as Bluetooth and/or WLANand/or other cellular networks.

For example in FIG. 1, carrier aggregation scenario 100 of LTE Band 4and Band 17 aggregation, B and C blocks of lower 700 MHz (uplink:704-716 102 MHz, downlink: 734-746 MHz 104) and the A block of anotherspectrum (uplink: 1710-1720 MHz 106, downlink: 2110-2120 MHz 108) may beused together. For the CA capable UE operated in this scenario, theuplink transmission on band 704-707 MHz of Band 17 causesself-desensitization in the downlink band of Band 4 due to the 3rd orderharmonic distortion 110, and the almost entire downlink channel band(2112-2120 MHz) in Band 4 can be affected by the harmonic interference.In addition, the harmonic distortion falling into the spectrum near theUE receive band of Band 4 can also cause desense due to potentialintermodulation with the received signal.

3GPP RAN working group considers items on inter-band carrier aggregationsuch as Band 17+Band 4, Band 5+Band 12, Band 5+Band 17, and Band 7+Band20, the scope of which includes simultaneous activation of two LTEuplink carriers in two bands. Various components at the transceiver pathsuch as antennas, power amplifiers (PAs), connectors, and switches, cancontribute to harmonics and intermodulation interference. When twocarriers are aggregated with a small frequency separation, the reverseinter-modulation, which is the leakage from one PA output mixed with theinput signal of another PA when there is simultaneous transmission onboth the carriers, occurs due to co-located PAs for different bands. Forexample, in uplink CA of Band 5 and Band 12, the 3rd orderintermodulation distortion (IMD) falling into the lowerIndustrial-Scientific-Medical (ISM) band (2400-2414 MHz) can desensitizeWLAN and Bluetooth receivers operated in those channels. In 3GPP LTERel-11 or future releases, aggregation of more than two componentcarriers is likely to be supported, and intra-band non-contiguouscarrier aggregation may be allowed, which result in more scenarios ofself-interference due to intermodulation or harmonics.

Another example of the self-interference is the receiver imageinterference from adjacent CCs in intra-band contiguous CA 200 is shownin FIG. 2. For the UE supporting multiple contiguous CCs, such as DL CC1 202 and DL CC 2 204, via a single radio frequency (RF) chain, thereceiver image from the adjacent CC may significantly degrade thesignal-to-interference and noise ratio (SINR) of the victim CC if thereceived signal power on the adjacent CC is much higher than thereceived signal power on the victim carrier. Thus, the received signalpower difference between two adjacent CCs which UE can handle is likelyto be dependent on UE image rejection capability.

It is expected that self-interference would impact a cell-edge userthroughput as the cell-edge UE transmits close to the maximum transmitpower while receiving weak downlink signals. However, the mean userthroughput is likely not impacted as much. For example, the 5%-tiledownlink received signal level is around −70 dBm, which is translated to−98 dBm/15 kHz for a 10 MHz downlink. If the output power of PA is 23dBm with uplink allocation over 180 KHz, the corresponding 3rd orderharmonic response is 7.4 dBm/15 KHz—harmonic suppression capability (indBc). If the harmonic suppression capability is less than 100 dBc, therewill be degradation to the cell-edge user throughput.

Various methods have been developed to reduce the self-interferencecaused by intermodulation of uplink signals simultaneously transmittedfrom two different radio access technologies (RAT). These methodsdisclosed reporting channel quality information (CQI) of the second RATwhile the first RAT is active, and at least one subband CQI reportedincludes potential desense region. However, “fake CQI” (an indication ofunusable subband or resource blocks) is reported for the potentialdesense region without estimating the desense or interference level.Only when UE receives an indicator to report additional CQI reflectingthe impact of IMD, the actual CQI can be reported and used by thescheduler.

Considering that each wireless communication terminal operated in awireless network may have different RF characteristics and performances,applying band/channel combination specific scheduling restrictions atbase station schedulers in a consistent manner in order to avoid theself-interference may limit the flexible and effective use of radioresources. Scheduling restrictions also cause extra burden to networkequipment vendors due to the increased complexity. Furthermore, inLTE-Advanced carrier aggregation, the potential desense region due toharmonics or IMD may be the entire receive band of one carrier since twowideband LTE channels are aggregated. Therefore, scheduling decision orcomponent carrier management based on the actual self-interference levelin each terminal may be beneficial for efficient use of radio resources.

The various aspects, features and advantages of the invention willbecome more fully apparent to those having ordinary skill in the artupon careful consideration of the following Detailed Description thereofwith the accompanying drawings described below. The drawings may havebeen simplified for clarity and are not necessarily drawn to scale.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 illustrates the self-interference in a wireless communicationterminal supporting inter-band carrier aggregation.

FIG. 2 illustrates the self-interference in a wireless communicationterminal supporting intra-band contiguous carrier aggregation.

FIG. 3 illustrates a wireless communication system.

FIG. 4 illustrates a schematic block diagram of a wireless communicationterminal.

FIG. 5 illustrates a flowchart showing a process for measuring andreporting the self-interference in a wireless communication terminalaccording to an embodiment.

FIG. 6 illustrates a flowchart showing a process for receiving ameasurement report of the self-interference and managing the networkresource in a network entity according to another embodiment.

FIG. 7 illustrates a flowchart showing a process for handling theself-interference in a wireless communication terminal according to yetanother embodiment.

FIG. 8 illustrates a flowchart showing a process in a network entity forhandling the self-interference in wireless communication terminals thatthe network entity supports according to still another embodiment.

FIG. 9 illustrates a simultaneous physical uplink control channel(PUCCH) and physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) transmission causingthe 3rd order harmonic interference into another component carrier.

FIGS. 10a and 10b illustrate PUCCH and PUSCH allocations which can avoidthe 3rd order harmonic falling into the center 6 physical resourceblocks (PRB) of the transmission band.

FIG. 11 illustrates a flowchart showing a process for handling theself-interference in a wireless communication terminal according to anembodiment.

FIG. 12 illustrates a flowchart showing a process for handling theself-interference in a wireless communication terminal according toanother embodiment.

Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures areillustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily beendrawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioningof some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative toother elements to help to improve understanding of various embodimentsof the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements thatare useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are oftennot depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of thesevarious embodiments of the present invention. It will further beappreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described ordepicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in theart will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence isnot actually required. Those skilled in the art will further recognizethat references to specific implementation embodiments such as“circuitry” may equally be accomplished via replacement with softwareinstruction executions either on general purpose computing apparatus(e.g., CPU) or specialized processing apparatus (e.g., DSP). It willalso be understood that the terms and expressions used herein have theordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressionsby persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above exceptwhere different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Emerging broadband wireless networks such as 3GPP LTE and LTE-Advancedmust solve the problems of minimizing the PA power consumption (or peakand/or mean current drain), cost, and the complexity required to delivera specified conducted power level and of enhancing linearity oftransmitter and receiver components (e.g. PA, low noise amplifier,mixer, analog-to-digital converter, and digital-to-analog converter) inthe context of new modes of system operation. For example, PA and RFfront-end filter performances must be optimized in the presence ofnumerous different frequency or spatially adjacent radio accesstechnologies, including GSM, UMTS, WCDMA, unlicensed transmitter andreceivers, among other radio access technologies.

Several embodiments are disclosed to address problems ofself-interference caused by harmonic/intermodulation distortion and/orreceiver images in a wireless communication terminal with carrieraggregation jointly using multiple component carriers for transmissionand reception within the terminal. It should be understood by oneskilled in the art, that although some of the embodiments are describedin the regime of LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation, the embodimentsdescribed are applicable to devices supporting other radio accesstechnologies (RAT) capable of aggregating multiple component carrierssuch as dual band dual carrier high speed uplink packet access(DB-DC-HSUPA) and also to multi-mode devices allowing concurrenttransmission and reception of multiple radio access technologies. Inaddition, some of the embodiments are applicable to devices having anyself-interference, which is occurred by its own transceiver duringtransmission or reception of signal.

An embodiment encompasses a method in a wireless communication terminalfor handling self-interference and communicating with a network entityover at least a first downlink channel and at least an aggressorchannel. The method includes performing self-interference measurementson a received signal on the first downlink channel, wherein a firstmeasurement is over a first set of resource blocks of the receivedsignal which are affected by self-interference due to communication onthe aggressor channel, and a second measurement is over a second set ofresource blocks of the received signal which include self-interferencefree resource blocks, and wherein at least the first measurement isperformed during time periods that overlap time periods during which thewireless communication terminal is communicating on the aggressorchannel, and transmitting a measurement report based on the first andthe second measurement to the network entity.

The method in this embodiment may further include receiving from thenetwork entity an indication to perform self-interference measurementson the received signal in the first downlink channel. The aggressorchannel may be an uplink channel or uplink component carrier or adownlink channel or downlink component carrier of a serving cell. Theself-interference on victim downlink channel may be due to harmonicdistortion from transmission in an uplink aggressor channel or carrier,inter-modulation distortion from transmission on at least two aggressorchannels, receiver image due to relative high power reception on adownlink aggressor channel.

Another embodiment encompasses a method in a network entity formanagement of network resources and handling self-interference inwireless communication terminals that the network entity supports. Thenetwork entity communicates with a wireless communication terminal overat least a first downlink channel and at least an aggressor channel. Themethod includes transmitting, by the wireless communication networkentity, a signal on the first downlink channel, receiving, by thewireless communication network entity, a measurement report based on afirst and a second measurement from the wireless communication terminal,wherein the first measurement is over a first set of resource blockscorresponding to reception of the signal on the first downlink channelwhich are affected by self-interference due to communication on theaggressor channel, and, the second measurement is over a second set ofresource blocks on the first downlink channel which includeself-interference free resource blocks, and wherein at least the firstmeasurement is performed during time periods that overlap time periodsduring which the wireless communication terminal is communicating on theaggressor channel, and performing management of resources on the firstdownlink channel and the aggressor channel based on the measurementreport. The management of resources on the first downlink channel andthe aggressor channel may comprise activation and deactivation of eachchannel, configuring one channel as a primary cell, and reselectinganother channel as a primary cell.

Yet another embodiment encompasses a method in a wireless communicationterminal for handling self-interference and communicating over at leasta first downlink channel and at least an uplink channel. The methodincludes determining based on a downlink signal whether an uplink signalis scheduled for transmission on the uplink channel in a subframe,wherein the uplink signal spans at least two timeslots in the subframeand the uplink signal comprises a first set of resource blocks in afirst timeslot and a second set of resource blocks, different from thefirst set of resource blocks, in a second time slot; determining a firstvalue for power reduction for transmission of the uplink signal in thefirst timeslot; determining a second value for power reduction fortransmission of the uplink signal in the second timeslot; andtransmitting the uplink signal in the subframe comprising at least thefirst timeslot and the second timeslot based on the first value forpower reduction and the second value for power reduction.

Yet another embodiment encompasses a method in a wireless communicationterminal for handling self-interference. The method includes, receiving,by the wireless terminal, a scheduling grant allocating uplinkresources, transmitting, by the wireless terminal, suppressioncapability information in a radio resource control (RRC) message on theallocated uplink resources, wherein the suppression capabilityinformation is one or more of a harmonic, intermodulation, or receiverimage level suppression relative to aggressor signal transmission power.

Another embodiment encompasses a method in a network entity for handlingself-interference in wireless communication terminals that the networkentity supports and communicating over at least a first downlink channeland one or more aggressor channels. The method includes allocating radioresources of the one or more aggressor channels to a wirelesscommunication terminal potentially having self-interference in a mannerto protect reception of critical downlink signals transmitted on thefirst downlink channel, wherein the critical downlink signals are a partof a synchronization channel (SCH), physical broadcast channel (PBCH)carrying MasterInformationBlock (MIB), and physical downlink sharedchannel (PDSCH) carrying SystemInformationBlocks (SIBs) or pagingmessage.

Another embodiment of the present invention encompasses a method in awireless communication terminal for handling self-interference. Themethod includes not transmitting PUCCH or PUSCH on a subset of symbolson one or more uplink channels, applying a Maximum Power Reduction (MPR)to some symbols of the subframe on one or more uplink channels, whereina set of symbols not transmitted or transmitted with MPR is determinedbased on the current value of timing advance.

Turning to FIG. 3, a multi-carrier wireless communication system 300comprises one or more fixed base infrastructure units 301, 302 forming anetwork distributed over a geographical region for serving remote unitsin the time and/or frequency and/or spatial and/or code domain. A baseunit may also be referred to as an access point, access terminal, base,base station, Node-B, eNode-B, a relay node, femto cell, Home Node-B,Home eNode-B, network entity or by other terminology used in the art.The one or more base units 301, 302, as explained with respect to FIG.2, each comprise one or more transmitters for downlink transmissions andone or more receivers for receiving uplink transmissions that serve theremote units.

The number of transmitters at the base unit may be related, for example,to the number of transmit antennas 312 at the base unit. When multipleantennas are used to serve each sector to provide various advancedcommunication modes, for example, adaptive beam-forming, transmitdiversity, and multiple stream transmission, etc., multiple base unitscan be deployed. These base units 301, 302 within a sector may be highlyintegrated and may share various hardware and software components. Forexample, a base unit may also comprise multiple co-located base unitsthat serve a cell (not shown). The base units are generally part of aradio access network 300 that includes one or more controllerscommunicably coupled to one or more corresponding base units.

The access network is generally communicably coupled to one or more corenetworks, which may be coupled to other networks, like the Internet andpublic switched telephone networks, among other networks. These andother elements of access and core networks are not illustrated but theyare well known generally by those having ordinary skill in the art. Thenetwork base units communicate with remote units to perform functionssuch as scheduling the transmission and receipt of information usingradio resources. The wireless communication network may also comprisemanagement functionality including information routing, admissioncontrol, billing, authentication etc., which may be controlled by othernetwork entities. These and other aspects of wireless networks are knowngenerally by those having ordinary skill in the art.

In FIG. 3, the one or more base units serve a number of remote units303, 304 within a corresponding serving area, for example, a cell or acell sector via a wireless communication link. The remote units 303, 304may be fixed units or mobile terminals. The remote units may also bereferred to as wireless communication terminal, subscriber units,mobiles, mobile stations, users, terminals, subscriber stations, userequipment (UE), user terminals, relays, or by other terminology used inthe art. The remote units also comprise one or more transmitters and oneor more receivers, as shown in FIG. 4. The number of transmitters may berelated, for example, to the number of transmit antennas 315 at theremote unit.

In FIG. 3, the base unit 301 transmits downlink communication signals ona downlink channel or a downlink carrier to serve remote unit 303 in thetime and/or frequency and/or spatial and/or code domain. The remote unit303 communicates directly with base unit 301 via uplink communicationsignals on an uplink channel or uplink carrier. The downlink and uplinkcarrier may be the same in case of TDD (Time Division Duplex). A remoteunit 304 communicates directly with base unit 302. In some cases theremote unit may communicate with the base unit indirectly through anintermediate relay node (not shown).

In one implementation, the wireless communication system is compliantwith the 3GPP Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) LTEprotocol, also referred to as EUTRA or Release-8 (Rel-8) 3GPP LTE orsome later generation thereof, wherein the base unit transmits using anorthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation scheme onthe downlink and the user terminals transmit on the uplink using asingle carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) scheme, or adiscrete Fourier Transform spread OFDM (DFT-SOFDM). In yet anotherimplementation, the wireless communication system is compliant with the3GPP Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) LTE-Advancedprotocol, also referred to as LTE-A or some later generation or releaseof LTE wherein the base unit transmits using an orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (OFDM) modulation scheme on a single or aplurality of downlink component carriers and the user terminals cantransmit on the uplink using a single or plurality of uplink componentcarriers. More generally, however, the wireless communication system mayimplement some other open or proprietary communication protocol, forexample, WiMAX, among other protocols. The architecture may also includethe use of spreading techniques such as multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA),multi-carrier direct sequence CDMA (MC-DS-CDMA), Orthogonal Frequencyand Code Division Multiplexing (OFCDM) with one or two dimensionalspreading. The architecture in which the features of the instantdisclosure are implemented may also be based on simpler time and/orfrequency division and/or spatial division multiplexing/multiple accesstechniques, or a combination of these various techniques. In alternativeembodiments, the wireless communication system may utilize othercommunication system protocols including, but not limited to, TDMA ordirect sequence CDMA. The communication system may be a TDD (TimeDivision Duplex) or FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) system. Thedisclosure is not intended to be limited to the implementation of anyparticular wireless communication system architecture or protocol.

In OFDM networks, both Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) and FrequencyDivision Multiplexing (FDM) are employed to map channel-coded,interleaved and data-modulated information onto OFDM time/frequencysymbols. The OFDM symbols can be organized into a number of resourceblocks consisting of M consecutive sub-carriers for a number Nconsecutive OFDM symbols where each symbol may also include a guardinterval or cyclic prefix (CP). An OFDM air interface is typicallydesigned to support carriers of different bandwidths, e.g., 5 MHz, 10MHz, etc. The resource block size in the frequency dimension and thenumber of available resource blocks are generally dependent on thebandwidth of the system.

In FIG. 4, a schematic block diagram of a wireless communicationterminal 400 is shown. Communication device 400 can be network equipmentsuch as a base unit 301, 302 or a wireless communicating device such asremote unit 303, 304. Communication device 400 comprises acontroller/processor 410 communicably coupled to memory 412, atransceiver 416, input/output (I/O) device interface 418 via a systembus 420. The UE is compliant with the protocol of the wirelesscommunication system within which it operates, for example, the 3GPP LTERel-8 or later generation protocol discussed above.

In FIG. 4, the controller/processor 410 may be implemented as anyprogrammed processor. However, the functionality described herein mayalso be implemented on a general-purpose or a special purpose computer,a programmed microprocessor or microcontroller, peripheral integratedcircuit elements, an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) orother integrated circuits, hardware/electronic logic circuits, such as adiscrete element circuit, a programmable logic device, such as aprogrammable logic array, field programmable gate-array, or the like.

In FIG. 4, the memory 412 may include volatile and nonvolatile datastorage, including one or more electrical, magnetic or optical memoriessuch as a random access memory (RAM), cache, hard drive, read-onlymemory (ROM), firmware, or other memory device. The memory may have acache to speed access to specific data. Data may be stored in the memoryor in a separate database. The memory may be embedded with an ASIC thatmay include the baseband processor. Such memory is sometimes referred toas on-chip memory. Alternatively, the memory may be shared with otherprocessors in the device such as an application or graphics processor,in which case the memory may be referred to as off-chip memory.

The transceiver 416 is capable of communicating with user terminals andbase stations pursuant to the wireless communication protocolimplemented. The wireless transceiver 416 is representative of a firsttransceiver that communicates pursuant to a first wireless communicationprotocol and possibly a second transceiver that communicates pursuant toa second wireless communication protocol like the WiFi or Bluetoothprotocols. In one embodiment, the first protocol is a cellularcommunication protocol like 3GPP LTE or some other known or futurewireless protocols examples of which were described above. Thetransceiver 416 is communicably coupled to a processor 410, and includesfunctionality that controls the transmission and reception ofinformation by the one or more transceivers. The transceiver alsoincludes functionality that decodes information received by the one ormore transceivers. The I/O device interface 418 connects to one or moreinput devices that may include a keyboard, mouse, pen-operated touchscreen or monitor, voice-recognition device, or any other device thataccepts input. The I/O device interface may also connect to one or moreoutput devices, such as a monitor, printer, disk drive, speakers, or anyother device provided to output data.

In the embodiment where the device 400 is a network entity such as abase station or eNode B, the device 400 includes a scheduler 422. Asexplained in more detail below, the scheduler 422 determines a frequencyand time resource allocation that maps information for a particular UE.The scheduler used information received by the network entity from theUE. In an embodiment, the scheduler can allocate all or a portion of aresource block. In addition, the scheduler allocates resource blocks forboth an aggressor carrier and a victim carrier.

Referring back to FIGS. 1 and 2, a wireless communication terminal inthe multi-carrier network generally supports multiple carrierscomprising at least two component carriers, wherein each componentcarrier is associated with a configured bandwidth. For example, a firstcomponent carrier may be associated with a first bandwidth and a secondcomponent carrier may be associated with a second bandwidth, and so on.The component carrier may be a downlink component carrier or an uplinkcomponent carrier in the case of FDD or support both downlink and uplinkin the case of TDD. The downlink component carrier and uplink componentcarrier may have the same or different bandwidth. In one embodiment, thefirst configured bandwidth of the first component carrier is not equalto the second configured bandwidth of the second component carrier. Forinstance, the first component carrier bandwidth may be 15 MHz, while thesecond component carrier may be 5 MHz, leading to an aggregate bandwidthof 20 MHz. In another embodiment, the first configured bandwidth of thefirst component carrier is equal to the second configured bandwidth ofthe second component carrier. For instance, the first and secondcomponent carriers have an equal bandwidth of 10 MHz each, leading to anaggregate bandwidth of 20 MHz.

The wireless communication terminal can transmit and receive datatransmissions on multiple component carriers using multiple servingcells with each serving cell associated with a particular componentcarrier of a particular bandwidth. Each serving cell is associated witha downlink component carrier and may be associated with an uplinkcomponent carrier. The wireless communication terminal can indicate tothe network the number of component carriers it supports using RadioResource Configuration (RRC) signaling. Alternately, the wirelesscommunication terminal can also indicate to the network via RRCsignaling, the number of component carriers it can support and thenumber of spatial layers (i.e., the number of TBs that the device canreceive via spatial multiplexing) it can support for each componentcarrier or the total number of spatial layers over all the componentcarriers it supports or a subset of the supported component carriers.

The cellular wireless terminal performs measurements on a serving cellrelated to received signal strength/quality such as reference signalreceived power (RSRP), reference signal received quality (RSRQ), andreceived signal strength indicator (RSSI), and evaluates channel qualityindications (CQI) for downlink subframes. If the self-interferencesignificantly degrades an operating SINR and RSRQ of a potential victimcell and/or the received signal power from the victim cell is lower thana threshold (low RSRP is likely for cell-edge UEs), then the schedulabledownlink resource blocks (RB) on the victim cell will be very limitedand it may be better not to activate both the victim cell and aggressorcell simultaneously. That is, to configure, activate, and deactivatecells associated with a potential victim or aggressor carrier frequencywith potential self-interference issues, a measurement metric shouldtake into account the self-interference level and a measurement reportshould be able to envision the impact of the self-interference on thevictim cell performance. This leads to a need for new special radioresource management (RRM) or radio link monitoring (RLM) measurements.

According to one embodiment, a wireless terminal is configured to reportthe self-interference level through self-interference measurementreports. More particularly, UE measures or estimates RSRQ and/or CQIdegradation due to the self-interference on a downlink channel orcarrier and preferably reports an offset (RSRQ and/or CQI degradationrelative to RSRQ and/or CQI obtained from self-interference freeresource blocks) along with RSRQ and/or CQI obtained fromself-interference free resource blocks. UE transmits or receivesaggressor signals on potential one or more aggressor channels orcarriers during a measurement period configured as a self-interferencemeasurement. In one embodiment, if one or more aggressor carriers arenon-configured or deactivated, the base station or network entityconfigures an aggressor signal transmission (uplink signal forharmonic/IM interferences and downlink signal for receiver imageinterference) during the measurement period to determine theself-interference impact on the victim cells. In an alternateembodiment, the UE performs self-interference measurement only onoccasions when an aggressor signal transmission occurs.

Turning to FIG. 5, a wireless communication terminal or UE communicates502 with a base station or network entity over at least a first downlinkchannel and at least an aggressor channel. The UE can receive from thenetwork entity an indication to perform 503 self-interferencemeasurements on the received signal in the first downlink channel. Inone implementation, the aggressor channel is an uplink channel, and theUE transmits uplink signal on the aggressor channel during at least ameasurement period for performing the first measurement. In anotherimplementation, the UE communicates with the network entity over atleast two serving cells, each serving cell supporting at least adownlink component carrier, wherein the first downlink channel is afirst downlink component carrier of a first serving cell, and theaggressor channel is an uplink component carrier of a second servingcell. In yet another implementation, the aggressor channel is a seconddownlink channel, and the UE receives a downlink signal on the aggressorchannel during at least a measurement period for performing the firstmeasurement. In another implementation, the UE communicates with thenetwork entity over at least two serving cells, each serving cellsupporting at least a downlink component carrier, wherein the firstdownlink channel is a first downlink component carrier of a firstserving cell, and the aggressor channel is a second downlink componentcarrier of a second serving cell.

In response to receiving the indication, the UE performs 504self-interference measurements on a received signal on the firstdownlink channel. The self-interference measurements can include 506 afirst measurement over a first set of resource blocks of the receivedsignal which are affected by self-interference due to communication onthe aggressor channel, and can include 508 a second measurement over asecond set of resource blocks of the received signal which includeself-interference free resource blocks. In an embodiment, the firstmeasurement is performed during time periods that overlap time periodsduring which the wireless communication terminal is communicating on theaggressor channel. The wireless communication terminal can transmit 510a measurement report based on the first and the second measurement tothe network entity.

In one embodiment, the measurement report comprises the firstmeasurement and the second measurement. In another embodiment, themeasurement report comprises the difference of the first measurement andthe second measurement.

FIG. 6 illustrates a network entity, such as a base station, thatcommunicates 602 with a UE or wireless communication terminal over adownlink channel and at least one aggressor channel. The network entitytransmits 604 to the wireless communication terminal an indication toperform self-interference measurements on the first downlink channel. Inresponse, the network entity receives 606 a measurement report based ona first and second measurement. In one embodiment, the measurementreport comprises the first measurement and the second measurement. Inanother embodiment, the measurement report comprises the difference ofthe first measurement and the second measurement.

The first measurement 608 is over a first set of resource blockscorresponding to the reception of the signal on the first downlinkchannel that is affected by self-interference due to communication onthe aggressor channel. The self-interference can be due to harmonic orintermodulation distortion interference. The first measurement can beperformed during time periods during which the wireless communicationterminal is communicating on the aggressor channel. The secondmeasurement 610 is over a second set of resource blocks on the firstdownlink channel which includes self-interference free blocks.

The network entity performs 612 management of resources on the firstdownlink channel and the aggressor channel based on the receivedmeasurement report. The management of resources can include activationand deactivation of each channel, configuring one channel as a primarycell and reselecting another channel as a primary cell.

The first set of resource blocks and the second set of resource blockscan be determined based on a frequency relationship between a frequencylocation of aggressor signal on the aggressor channel and a frequencylocation of corresponding self-interference on the first downlinkchannel. The frequency relationship is based on a physical resourceblock number relationship between the aggressor signal on the aggressorchannel and the signal on the first downlink channel.

In an embodiment of FIG. 6, the aggressor channel can be an uplinkchannel. In this embodiment, the network entity schedules transmissionto the wireless communication terminal of an uplink signal forperforming the first measurement on the aggressor channel during ameasurement period. The self-interference due to transmission on theaggressor channel is due to one of a harmonic and an intermodulationdistortion interference. The network entity can communicate with thewireless communication terminal over at least two serving cells whereeach serving cell supports downlink component carriers. The firstdownlink channel can be a first downlink component carrier of a firstserving cell and the aggressor channel is an uplink component carrier ofthe second serving cell.

In another embodiment of FIG. 6, the aggressor channel can be a seconddownlink channel. The network entity in this embodiment transmits adownlink signal on the aggressor channel during at least a measurementperiod for the wireless communication terminal to perform the firstmeasurement. The self-interference can be due to receiver image of thedownlink signal within the first downlink channel.

One embodiment is that UE obtains uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) carrierfrequencies from system information communicated to the UE for thesupported carrier aggregation (CA) band combinations, and derives thephysical resource block (PRB) number relationship between one or moreaggressor channel bands and a victim channel band. For example, the PRBnumber relationship between the Band 17 uplink channel, 705-715 MHz(aggressor), and the Band 4 downlink channel, 2110-2120 MHz (victim), iscomputed as follows for third-order harmonic interference withcontiguous RB allocation in UL:

${n_{PRB}^{B\; 4} = \left\lfloor \frac{{3 \cdot \left( {705.5 + {n_{PRB}^{B\; 17} \cdot 0.18}} \right)} - 2110.5}{0.18} \right\rfloor},$

where n_(PRB) ^(B4) and n_(PRB) ^(B17) are PRB numbers of Band 4downlink and Band 17 uplink, respectively. The aggressor-victim PRBnumber relationship can be used to find out PRB numbers of thecorresponding potential desense region for PRBs on the aggressorcarrier.

Thus, in one embodiment, the UE determines the first set of resourceblocks which are affected by self-interference and the second set ofresource blocks which include self-interference free resource blocks onthe first downlink channel based on a frequency relationship between afrequency location of aggressor signal on the aggressor channel and afrequency location of corresponding self-interference on the firstdownlink channel. The frequency relationship can be physical resourceblock (PRB) number relationship between the aggressor signal on theaggressor channel and the received signal on the first downlink channel.

Suppose that a UE supports a carrier aggregation band combination withone or more potential victim and aggressor carrier frequencies due toharmonics or intermodulation products. If the UE signals supported bandcombinations to a base station and camps on one of victim or aggressorfrequencies, then the base station configures the UE for a harmonic orintermodulation self-interference measurement on the potential victimfrequency through higher-layer, for example, radio resource control(RRC) signaling. A self-interference measurement is not configured ifany combination of carrier frequencies supported in the network forinter-band aggregation does not cause the self-interference in the UE.

If a UE is configured for harmonic interference measurements by RRCsignaling and a carrier frequency of the primary cell (PCell) is eithera victim or an aggressor frequency in supported CA band combinations,the UE transmits uplink signal in the aggressor carrier frequency whileperforming measurements on the potential victim carrier frequency. Themeasurements may be performed via either inter-frequency orintra-frequency measurements. A primary cell is referred to the servingcell that provides NAS mobility information and security information tothe UE.

If a UE is configured for intermodulation interference measurements byRRC signaling and a carrier frequency of the PCell is either a victim oran aggressor frequency in supported CA band combinations, the potentialvictim carrier frequency is measured via one of inter-frequency orintra-frequency measurements with uplink transmission in all aggressorcarrier frequencies that result in intermodulation interference on thevictim frequency.

Currently, 3GPP EUTRA LTE TS 36.133 allows a measurement gap formeasuring non-configured (not configured as a secondary cell, SCell)frequencies in inter-band carrier aggregation. However, with theproposed harmonic or intermodulation self-interference measurementconfigured, a UE may turn on the receive RF chain of the victim band forthe measurement of the non-configured victim frequency, and maintainuplink and downlink activities in the PCell without interruption duringthe measurement. In order to minimize the additional UE powerconsumption from the self-interference measurement, the UE can alternatebetween the conventional inter-frequency measurement (possibly with ameasurement gap, that is, no uplink transmission on aggressor carriers)and the self-interference harmonic or intermodulation measurement forthe non-configured victim frequency.

For example, for a UE capable of Band 4 and Band 17 aggregation, when aserving cell with Band 17 carrier is configured as the PCell and apotential victim carrier frequency in Band 4, which is not associatedwith any configured SCell (Secondary Cell which can be configured toform together with the PCell a set of serving cells which the UE can usefor communication with the network entity), is measured throughinter-frequency measurement, the UE is configured to send uplink signalon the Band 17 aggressor carrier frequency during measurement, in orderto include the 3rd order harmonic interference to the measurementresults. Since UE is expected to be equipped with separate RF chains foreach band in inter-band carrier aggregation of high and low frequenciescombination, the inter-frequency measurement of the Band 4 carrier islikely to be feasible without measurement gap and accordingly,transmission on the Band 17 uplink carrier during inter-frequencymeasurement is feasible.

If the aggressor carrier is deactivated or not configured, the basestation signals to the UE appropriate uplink transmission configurationswith transmit power and RB allocations for the self-interferencemeasurement. This uplink signal transmitted on the deactivated ornon-configured aggressor carrier during the measurement may be soundingreference signal (SRS)-like signal, and the base station can use it forpath loss or channel quality estimation or other purposes.

For example, if the Band 4 carrier (victim) is configured as a PCell andthe harmonic measurement is configured for the UE, then the Band 4carrier measurement is done with Band 17 uplink transmissionirrespective of whether the Band 17 aggressor carrier is configured asan SCell or not. Alternatively, the UE only performs measurement invictim Band 4 carrier frequency when an UL transmission occurs in theBand 17 aggressor carrier frequency.

If a UE is configured for harmonic or intermodulation interferencemeasurements, the UE generates two sets of measurement values (e.g.RSRP, RSRQ, RSSI), one obtained from a set of resource blocks (RBs), asignificant portion of which are affected by the harmonic orintermodulation interference, and the other from a set of RBs withoutthe harmonic or intermodulation interference. Note that the harmonic/IMinterference power level observed in the victim cell's receive banddepends on the UE harmonic/IM suppression capability, UE transmit powerlevel, and uplink allocation in one or more aggressor carriers. Byaveraging measurement values (obtained in each slot or subframe) overseveral slots or subframes within a measurement period, the averagedegradation of RSRQ due to the harmonic/IM interference can be obtained.In the measurement report, UE sends RSRP and RSRQ obtained fromharmonic/IM interference-free resource blocks and the average RSRQoffset.

In another embodiment, during CA operation with Band 17 PCell and Band 4SCell, RSRQ measurement on Band 4 SCell may be configured to occur onlyduring occasions when the UE is not transmitting on Band 17 PCell. Asthe UE has complete knowledge when UL transmission is scheduled, nosubframe subset configuration signaling is needed to be sent to the UE.Additionally, the UE may be configured to perform RSRQ measurements onSCell during occasions when the UE UL is active on PCell. Thesemeasurements include the impact of the harmonics and/or intermodulationdistortion which is a function of the UE transmit power and allocation.Such measurements may be normalized to a reference power and referenceallocation size prior to reporting or averaging the measurements. Themeasurements may be further conditioned to occur only when theinterference impacts a particular set of downlink resource blocks.

The new set of measurements (RSRP, RSRQ, and CQI obtained from theharmonic/IM interference-free RBs and CQI/RSRQ offsets) obtained by theself-interference harmonic or intermodulation measurement is used by thenetwork in order to determine whether to configure, activate, ordeactivate SCell and perform SCell-to-PCell switching and handover inthe inter-band combination scenario with the potential self-interferencefrom harmonic or intermodulation distortion. Similarly, the base stationcan use the new measurement reports on the UE receiver imageinterference for DL power control and scheduling in each componentcarrier, and for SCell deactivation.

The power radiated into an adjacent frequency band and the harmonic andintermodulation distortion by a UE are governed by several designcriteria related to the implementation of mobile terminal transmitters,including oscillator phase noise, digital-analog converter (DAC) noise,power amplifier linearity (in turn controlled by power amplifier mode,cost, power consumption etc.), RF front-end filter responses, amongothers.

Thus, in one embodiment a harmonic/IM distortion level or the receiverimage level relative to aggressor uplink (for harmonic/IM) or downlink(for receiver image) transmission power can be measured for typical andthe worst-case performances. A UE can report such measures to theserving base station as part of capability exchanges. The base stationcan subsequently use this information jointly with power control updatesand reported DL channel measurements in order to determine resourceallocation on the aggressor carriers.

As seen in FIG. 7, the UE receives 702 a scheduling grant allocatinguplink resource. In response, the UE transmits 704 its suppressioncapability information in a radio resource control (RRC) message,wherein the suppression capability information is one or more of aharmonic, intermodulation, or receiver image level suppression relativeto aggressor signal transmission power. The suppression capabilityinformation can be one or both of typical and worst-case suppressioncapability information. Additionally, the suppression capabilityinformation can be based on one or more of wireless terminalmeasurements, and wireless terminal manufacturer's measurements anddeclarations. The suppression capability information based on wirelessterminal measurements can be semi-static information due to filter,power amplifier, or other components' performance variation overtemperatures. The UE may transmit the suppression capability informationperiodically to the serving base station or network entity.

Another embodiment is that UE estimates its harmonic/IM suppressioncapability, which may vary in a semi-static way due to filter/PA orother components' performance variation over temperatures, and sends itto the base station (e.g., periodically). UE computes RSSI from a set ofRBs (Set 1) affected by the harmonic/IM interference, and another RSSIfrom a set of RBs (Set 2) which is harmonic/IM interference-free,adjacent to Set 1 in frequency and/or time, and has the same number ofRBs as Set 1. UE can assume that the difference between two computedRSSI values is an estimate of the harmonic/IM interference level, I_(h).Alternatively, the number of RBs in Set 1 and Set 2 may be different andthe RSSI is normalized by the number of RBs in the set before taking thedifference to estimate the harmonic/IM interference level.

Additionally, since UE knows exactly how many RBs in Set 1 are affectedby the harmonic/IM interference and transmit power of correspondingaggressor uplink RBs, UE can obtain the estimated harmonic/IMsuppression level as follows:

${{UE}\mspace{14mu}{harmonic}\text{/}{IM}\mspace{14mu}{rejection}} = {P_{tx} - I_{h} + {10 \cdot {\log\left( \frac{D_{2}}{D_{1}} \right)}}}$

where P_(tx) is a transmit power for corresponding aggressor uplink RBs,D₁ is the bandwidth of the harmonic/IM interference measured in numberof RBs, D₂ is the number of desense RBs within Set 1 (D₂≦D₁), and I_(h)is an estimate of the harmonic/IM interference level. With the estimatedsuppression capability, UE can predict worst and typical RSRQdegradation and send several RSRQ offset values such as a typicaldegradation and a maximum degradation in the measurement reports.

In estimating the harmonic/IM interference level, the harmonicinterference levels could be different on each receive antenna portdepending on UE transceiver architectures and harmonic/IM scenarios. Forexample, in Band 4 and Band 17 aggregation, if UE transmits on oneantenna, receives with two antennas, and RF chains for Band 17 and Band4 are derived by the common antenna, then UE has lower harmonicinterference level on the receive only antenna port by the antennaisolation level between the transmit antenna and the receive antenna.Thus, the interference estimation may be done independently at eachreceive antenna port.

In OFDM systems, a resource allocation is a frequency and timeallocation that maps information for a particular UE to resource blocksas determined by the scheduler. This allocation depends, for example, onthe frequency-selective channel-quality indication reported by the UE tothe scheduler. The channel-coding rate and the modulation scheme, whichmay be different for different resource blocks, are also determined bythe scheduler and may also depend on the reported CQI. A UE may not beassigned every sub-carrier in a resource block. It could be assignedevery Qth sub-carrier of a resource block, for example, to improvefrequency diversity. Thus a resource assignment can be a resource blockor a fraction thereof. More generally, a resource assignment is afraction of multiple resource blocks. Multiplexing of lower-layercontrol signaling may be based on time, frequency and/or codemultiplexing.

The radio resource allocated to a schedulable wireless communicationentity is based on an interference impact of the schedulable wirelesscommunication entity operating on the radio resource allocated. Theinterference impact may be based on any one or more of the followingfactors: a transmission waveform type of the schedulable wirelesscommunication entity; a maximum allowed and current power level of theschedulable wireless communication entity; bandwidth assignable to theschedulable wireless communication entity; location of the assignablebandwidth in a carrier band; radio frequency distance (path loss)relative to another wireless communications entity; variation in themaximum transmit power of the schedulable wireless communication entityfor the assigned bandwidth; separation of assigned band relative to theother wireless communication entity; reception bandwidth of the victimentity, minimum SNR required for operation of the victim entity; andreception multiple access processing (e.g., CDMA, OFDM, or TDMA), amongother factors.

According to an embodiment shown in FIG. 8, if both aggressor and victimcarriers are activated, then the base station scheduler allocates 802radio resources of the aggressor carrier to a UE potentially having theself-interference in a manner to protect UE's reception of criticaldownlink signals transmitted on the victim carrier such assynchronization channel (SCH), physical broadcast channel (PBCH)carrying MasterInformationBlock (MIB), and physical downlink sharedchannel (PDSCH) carrying SystemInformationBlocks (SIBs) or pagingmessage.

Considering Band 4 (victim) and Band 17 (aggressor) aggregation as theexample use case, if the Band 4 carrier is configured as the PCell, theUE must be able to reliably decode MIB and SIBs on the Band 4 carrier.As per EUTRA LTE Rel-10 RRC specification TS 36.331, the UE is notexpected to decode MIB and SIBs on the SCell. However, even when thecarrier on Band 4 is configured as the SCell, the UE must be capable ofcontinuously monitoring neighbor cells on the Band 4 carrier andcompleting handover or SCell-to-PCell changes where the new PCell is onthe Band 4 carrier. This would necessitate a certain minimum detectionperformance of SCH on the Band 4 carrier. PBCH and SCH are transmittedon the center 6 PRBs of the transmission band on every 10 ms and 5 ms,respectively. In addition, SIBs and paging messages are transmitted onthe part of transmission bandwidth with periodicities of multiple oftransmission time interval (TTI). Therefore, protecting DL receptionover a portion of the subbands in selected subframes can make the Band 4carrier remain schedulable on the DL.

In the above example, the self-interference problem primarily arisesfrom physical uplink control channel (PUCCH), SRS, and physical uplinkshared channel (PUSCH) and uplink data modulation-reference signal(DM-RS) transmissions on the Band 17 uplink carrier. As the base stationscheduler has flexibility on resource allocation of PUSCH/uplinkDM-RS/SRS in terms of allocated subframes, frequency location, number ofallocated RBs, and transmit power, PUSCH/SRS/DM-RS can be transmittedwithout causing the harmonic interference to theMIB/SIB/paging/synchronization signal of the Band 4 DL carrier. However,the resources allocated for PUCCH transmission are semi-staticallyconfigured by the higher layer (RRC), which may limit scheduler-basedcoordination approaches.

More specifically, the harmonic distortion caused by the PA can bemodeled as follows: Consider the Taylor series expansion (up to thefirst three terms) of the PA output y(t) as a function input signalx(t). Assuming that f_(c) is an aggressor component carrier frequencyand 3f_(c) is a victim component carrier frequency, only the first andthe third order terms contribute to signal components at f_(c) and3f_(c). Thus, we focus on just the first and the third order terms:y(t)=a ₁ x(t)+a ₃ x ³(t)

Suppose that x(t)=Re[z(t)e^(j2πf) ^(c) ^(t)], where z(t) is thecomplex-valued baseband signal. After some simplification, the followingis obtained:

${y(t)} = {{\left( {a_{1} + {\frac{3\; a_{2}}{4}{{z(t)}}^{2}}} \right){{Re}\left\lbrack {{z(t)}{\mathbb{e}}^{j\; 2\pi\; f_{c}t}} \right\rbrack}} + {\frac{a_{3}}{4}{{Re}\left\lbrack {{z^{3}(t)}{\mathbb{e}}^{{{j2\pi}{({3\; f_{c}})}}t}} \right\rbrack}}}$

This implies that the 3rd harmonic response is equal to a 2nd orderself-convolution. Assuming a weakly-stationary complex-valued Gaussianinput z(t), the power spectrum density of response at 3f_(c) can bewritten as

$\frac{a_{3}}{4}{{S_{z}(f)} \otimes {S_{z}(f)} \otimes {{S_{z}(f)}.}}$For contiguous resource allocation (RA), the frequency span at 3f_(c) issimply equal to frequency span delimited by [3f_(1,f) _(c) ,3f_(2,f)_(c) ] where f_(1,f) _(c) and f_(2,f) _(c) are the minimum and maximumfrequencies associated with the contiguous RA at f_(c). Fornon-contiguous resource allocations with multiple clusters, the responseat 3f_(c) must be determined by computing the self-convolution above.

Consider a simultaneous PUSCH and PUCCH transmission over 100 RBs (=20MHz) at f_(c). PUCCH spans 3 RBs towards the band edge (RB indices 2, 3,4 and 95, 96 and 97 in this example) and PUSCH allocation spans RBindices 10 through 49 (Note, the example 3RB PUCCH is not compliant tocurrent LTE spec, but same behavior is expected for 1RB PUCCH). It isassumed that PUSCH is transmitted at a power below that for PUCCH suchthat the difference of the power spectrum density (PSD) is equal to 7dB.

FIG. 9 shows the PSD of UL transmission at f and the effect ofself-convolution at 3f_(c) for slot 0 and slot 1 separately. The regionof interest at 3f_(c) is restricted to the RB range [−49, 50] as theresponse outside of this range is filtered by the UE receive path. Ifthe victim DL center frequency is equal to 3f_(c) where f_(c) is the ULcenter frequency, clearly, a substantial portion the DL bandwidth canpotentially be interfered with due to the self-convolution component.

Now suppose that the PUSCH allocation is modified to span 2 clusterssuch that each cluster has 20 RBs. Further suppose that the PUSCH RBsadjoin PUCCH RBs. The responses at f_(c) and 3f_(c) are shown in FIG.10(a). The PSD in dB scale of the self-convolution at 3f_(c) over thecenter 30 PRBs is shown in FIG. 10(b). Referring back to FIG. 8, it istherefore possible to create transmission nulls (i.e., at least 25 dBcsuppression) over the center 6 PRBs by breaking up 804 the PUSCH clusterinto two clusters. In this example, it is assumed that the DL centerfrequency for the high-band is at 3f_(c). If this is not the case, it isstill possible to break single cluster PUSCH into multiple clusters in away that transmission nulls are created over the desired narrowband aslong as the PUSCH resource allocation size is within a certain limit.

While protecting a desired narrowband on the DL can be used for thereliable reception of MIB/SIB/paging/synchronization signal, it is notapplicable to protecting the reception of physical downlink controlchannel (PDCCH), which is a wideband transmission. FIG. 11 shows thatone embodiment for guaranteeing the reliable downlink controlinformation for the serving cell associated with the victim carrier isto use cross-carrier scheduling, which transmits 1102 a PDCCH forindicating uplink or downlink grant on the serving cell associated withthe victim component carrier on another DL component carrier. Forexample, when Band 4 (victim) and Band 17 (aggressor) carriers areaggregated and jointly used by UE, the serving base station transmits aPDCCH conveying the scheduling information on resources of the Band 4 ULor DL carrier for the UE on the Band 17 DL carrier. Moreover, physicalhybrid ARQ indicator channel (PHICH) that carries the hybrid-ARQACK/NACK of Band 4 UL transmission is also transmitted on the Band 17 DLcarrier.

FIG. 11 shows a method of communication over the downlink and uplinkchannels to protect the downlink control information. The method doesnot transmit 1104 aggressor PUCCH or PUSCH on a subset of symbols. Themethod also applies 1106 a Maximum Power Reduction (MPR) to some symbolsof the subframe. The UE can determine, based on the current value oftiming advance (TA), the minimum set of UL symbols (1, 2, 3 or 4) at theaggressor carrier that de-senses the PDCCH symbols at the victimcarrier. The UE can then either blank 1108 these symbols or apply 1110an MPR on these symbols different from the one being applied for thatslot. Another embodiment is that based on the self-interferencemeasurement reports, the base station boosts 1112 the PDCCH transmitpower or lowers 1114 the code rate of the PDCCH to avoid the increasedrate of PDCCH false detection due to the self-interference. The coderate of the PDCCH can be lowered by aggregating more control channelelements (CCEs), in the victim serving cell.

For a given carrier band and band separation, transmissions with largeroccupied bandwidth (OBW) create more out of band emissions resulting ina larger adjacent or neighbor channel leakage ratio (ACLR) thantransmissions with smaller OBW. To avoid the relative increase in ACLR,it is generally necessary to reduce or de-rate transmission powercreated by the interfering entity. This can be generally achieved byapplying an MPR and an additional Maximum Power Reduction (A-MPR) to themaximum power of the mobile terminal. If PMAX is the maximum power atwhich the mobile terminal is capable of transmitting, applying an MPRand A-MPR will reduce the maximum power at which the terminal cantransmit to PMAX-MPR-AMPR.

It is known for the scheduler to allocate the radio resource based onthe interference impact by assigning bandwidth based on power headroomof the schedulable wireless communication entity. Particularly, thescheduler can find a bandwidth size that reduces the self-interferencesuch that the required power reduction does not exceed the allowed MPRand A-MPR of the schedulable wireless communication entity.

A scheduler may also control leakage into adjacent and non-contiguousadjacent bands by scheduling mobile terminals that are “close” to theserving cell in terms of path loss with bandwidth allocations thatoccupy the entire carrier band or a bandwidth allocation that includesresource blocks that are at the edge of the carrier band (e.g., 5 MHzUTRA or LTE carrier) since due to power control it is very unlikely thatsuch a terminal will be operating at or near to PMAX and thereforeunlikely that its current power level would be limited by theoperational maximum power (PMAX-MPR-AMPR). A scheduler may scheduleterminals that have little or no power margin with bandwidth allocationsthat exclude resource blocks at the carrier band edge reducing thelikelihood of the terminal being power limited by the operationalmaximum power.

Generally, however, and in common with most non-linear transformationsexpandable in terms a polynomial power series, UE power amplifiers giverise to undesired adjacent band interference in broad proportion, for agiven PA design, to the mean power offered to the PA input. As aconsequence of 3rd or 5th order polynomial terms, the frequency at whichinterference occurs is at 3 or 5 times the frequency of the input signalcomponents, or harmonics thereof. Also, the power of such out-of-bandcomponents generally increases at 3 or 5 times the rate of increase ofthe input power level.

Accordingly, mobile terminals may control their out of band emissionlevels by limiting the power to the PA. Given a specific rated maximumoutput (or input) power level designed to achieve a given level ofinterference into an adjacent frequency band, or level of in-banddistortion, a mobile terminal may elect to adjust, for example, reduceits input, power level in order to reduce such unwanted effects. Themobile terminal may also keep its power at a given level, but adjust itsoperating point (load, bias, supply, etc.) to effect adjustment of theemission levels. As described elsewhere herein, a decision to increaseor decrease the input or output PA power may be subject to othercriteria, including waveform bandwidth, location in a frequency band,waveform quality metric, among other considerations.

In another embodiment, the wireless communication terminal changes themaximum transmit power limit on a per-slot basis as means of reducingthe impact of harmonic or intermodulation distortion on the receiveband. As PUCCH is transmitted on different frequency segments acrossslots (e.g., in the lower half transmission band relative to DCsubcarrier on slot 0 and in the upper half transmission band relative toDC subcarrier in slot 1), the frequency location where harmonic/IMdistortions fall changes for different slots. Therefore, the UE canimplement slot-based desense-MPR (D-MPR) by applying the UL powercontrol equations as below.

The setting of the UE transmit power P_(PUCCH)(i,n_(s)) for the PUCCHtransmission in subframe i and slot n_(s) is defined byP _(PUCCH)(i,n _(s))=min{P _(CMAX)(n _(s)),P ₀ _(_) _(PUCCH) +PL+h(n_(CQI) ,n _(HARQ))+ΔF_PUCCH(F)+g(i)}[dBm]where P_(CMAX)(n_(s)) the configured maximum UE transmit power setwithin the following bounds:P _(CMAX) _(_) _(L)(n _(s))≦P _(CMAX)(n _(s))≦P _(CMAX) _(_) _(H)where

-   -   P_(CMAX) _(_) _(L)(n_(s))=MIN{P_(EMAX)−DTC,        P_(PowerClass)−MPR−A-MPR−D-MPR(n_(s)), DTC}    -   P_(CMAX) _(_) _(H)=MIN{P_(EMAX), P_(PowerClass)},    -   P_(EMAX) is the value given configured by higher layers,    -   P_(PowerClass) is the maximum UE as per the UE power class,    -   MPR is as defined in 3GPP TR 36.807 or 3GPP TS 36.101 for the        multi-cluster case    -   A-MPR is as specified in 3GPP TS 36.101,    -   DTc is a pre-specified fixed value, and    -   D-MPR(n_(s)) is the desense maximum power reduction computed on        a per-slot basis as a function of nominal transmit power for        PUSCH and PUCCH and the impact of the harmonics and IM on the        desired receive band.

The parameter Δ_(F) _(_) _(PUCCH)(F) is provided by higher layers.

h(n_(CQI),n_(HARQ)) is a PUCCH format dependent value, where n_(CQI)corresponds to the number of information bits for the channel qualityinformation and n_(HARQ) is the number of HARQ bits.

P_(O) _(_) _(PUCCH) is a parameter composed of the sum of a cellspecific parameter, P_(O) _(_) _(NOMINAL) _(_) _(PUCCH) provided byhigher layers, and a UE specific component P_(O) _(_) _(UE) _(_)_(PUCCH) provided by higher layers.

g(i) is the current PUCCH power control adjustment state and where g(0)is the first value after reset activated in closed-loop power controlmode.

PL is the base station to UE path loss.

The above equation is not a unique parameterization. Note that otherapproaches to express the dependence of P_(PUCCH)(i,n_(s)) on slot n_(s)and D-MPR can be envisioned. Similarly to PUCCH, PUSCH power controlequation can be written down as a function of the slot number n_(s) andD-MPR.

The terminal is typically configured to send reports indicating itsavailable power headroom to assist the scheduler in the base station toallocate resources in an appropriate manner. Since the configuredmaximum UE transmit power, Pcmax (defined per component carrier),changes at slot boundary within a subframe for a given UL channel (i.e.,PUCCH, PUSCH, SRS), it is beneficial for the base station to know thevalue of Pcmax in each slot so that it can assess the MPR, A-MPR, D-MPR,etc. applied by the UE in each slot. In one embodiment, the UE reportsthe pair of values for Pcmax (two slots) to the base station bundled ina power headroom report (PHR). Then, the base station must be able todetermine the range of actual power backoff applied by the UE on aslot-wise basis to properly take into account the variation of SNRacross the symbol and slot boundaries in demodulation and decoding.

Thus, as seen in FIG. 12, the UE may determine 1202 based on a downlinksignal whether an uplink signal is scheduled for transmission on theuplink channel in a subframe, wherein the uplink signal spans at leasttwo timeslots in the subframe and the uplink signal comprises a firstset of resource blocks in a first timeslot and a second set of resourceblocks, different from the first set of resource blocks, in a secondtime slot; determine 1204 a first value for power reduction fortransmission of the uplink signal in the first timeslot, determine 1206a second value for power reduction for transmission of the uplink signalin the second timeslot; and transmit 1208 the uplink signal in thesubframe comprising at least the first timeslot and the second timeslotbased on the first value for power reduction and the second value forpower reduction. The UE may determine 1210 a first value of configuredmaximum transmission power (Pcmax(0)) based on the first value for powerreduction applicable to the first timeslot, and determine 1212 a secondvalue of configured maximum transmission power (Pcmax(1)) based on thesecond value for power reduction applicable to the second timeslot, andreport the first configured maximum transmission power Pcmax(0) and thesecond first configured maximum transmission power Pcmax(1) to a firstbase station. In one implementation, the UE may determine 1214 whetherself-interference including harmonic and intermodulation interferencecan result or occur on the downlink channel based on the scheduleduplink signal transmission in the first timeslot and the second timesloton the uplink channel and determine 1216 the first value for powerreduction based on the determined self-interference in the firsttimeslot, and determine 1218 the second value for power reduction basedon the determined self-interference in the second timeslot. The UE maydetermine whether self-interference can result on a subframe on thedownlink channel, when the subframe comprises critical downlink controlinformation including one or more of primary synchronization channel,secondary synchronization channel, Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH),System Information Block (SIB) message, and paging message. In anotherimplementation, UE may determine the first value for power reduction inthe first slot and the second value for power reduction on the secondslot on the uplink channel based on an indication of the severity of aharmonic or intermodulation interference on the first downlink channelresulting from uplink signal transmission in one or both of the firstand second slot on the uplink channel.

In one implementation, the UE may report a power headroom report to thefirst base station. The power headroom report may comprise a powerheadroom value for the first timeslot and/or a power headroom value forthe second timeslot. In another implementation, the power headroomreport may comprise a power headroom value derived from the powerheadroom value for the first timeslot and the power headroom value forthe second timeslot.

While the present disclosure and the best modes thereof have beendescribed in a manner establishing possession and enabling those ofordinary skill to make and use the same, it will be understood andappreciated that there are equivalents to the exemplary embodimentsdisclosed herein and that modifications and variations may be madethereto without departing from the scope and spirit of the inventions,which are to be limited not by the exemplary embodiments but by theappended claims.

The invention claimed is:
 1. A method in a wireless terminal connectedto a serving base station, the method comprising: receiving, by thewireless terminal, a scheduling grant allocating uplink resources;determining self-interference suppression capability information; andtransmitting, by the wireless terminal, the self-interferencesuppression capability information in a radio resource control (RRC)message on the allocated uplink resources; wherein the self-interferencesuppression capability information is one or more of a harmonic,intermodulation, or receiver image level suppression relative toaggressor signal transmission power.
 2. The method of claim 1, whereinthe self-interference suppression capability information is based on oneor more of wireless terminal measurements and wireless terminalmanufacturers measurements.
 3. The method of claim 2, wherein theself-interference suppression capability information based on wirelessterminal measurements is semi-static information due to filter, poweramplifier, or other components' performance variation over temperature.4. The method of claim 3, further comprising transmitting thesemi-static suppression information periodically to the serving basestation.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the self-interferencesuppression capability information is the harmonic.
 6. The method ofclaim 1, wherein the self-interference suppression capabilityinformation is the receiver image level suppression relative toaggressor signal transmission power.
 7. A method in a wirelesscommunication network entity communicating over at least a firstdownlink channel and one or more aggressor channels, the methodcomprising: allocating, by one or more processors, radio resources ofthe one or more aggressor channels to a wireless communication terminalhaving self-interference, wherein the radio resources protect receptionof critical downlink signals transmitted on the first downlink channelfrom the self-interference of the wireless communication terminal,wherein the critical downlink signals are synchronization channel (SCH),physical broadcast channel (PBCH) carrying MasterInformationBlock (MIB),and physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) carryingSystemInformationBlocks (SIBs) or a paging message.
 8. The method ofclaim 7, wherein the radio resources allocation comprises breaking asingle cluster physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) into multipleclusters so that at least one of self-interference nulls and lowself-interference power levels are created over a desired narrowbandcorresponding to at least a portion of the critical downlink signals onthe first downlink channel.